Bangladesh still fumbles with COVID-19: experts

Bangladesh on Saturday passed the 16th week after the first COVID-19 cases were detected in the country but the authorities are still fumbling about their tasks in detection, isolation and treatment of the patients, observers said.

 

Despite a continued surge in the number of COVID-19 patients, the sample testing operations have remained unorganised and the test numbers are still low, they said.

The contact-tracing of the identified patients, and the quarantining and isolation of the suspected patients are also not being done in a systematic way, according to health experts.

‘In terms of every parameter — testing of suspected patients, isolating them, contact-tracing and treatment of patients — Bangladesh is failing to perform well,’ said Nazrul Islam, a noted virologist and former vice-chancellor of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University.

He said that Bangladesh was not prepared, as the world was also not prepared, for a pandemic like the coronavirus one, but despite passing so many days and weeks, a lack of coordination, mismanagement and resources gap is evident in Bangladesh.

Epidemiologist and IEDCR advisor Mustuq Husain observed that Bangladesh’s progress was slow in regards to actions against the COVID-19 calamity.

He said that the right way to fight the COVID-19 spread was to quickly trace and isolate the patients, trace and quarantine the contacts and treat the patients in a holistic manner.

Health secretary Abdul Mannan, however, said that the ministry and the whole government were ‘trying their best with limited resources’ to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

‘The government is now adamant to ensure quality care, raising the number of tests and ensuring the proper management of the suspected and confirmed cases,’ he told New Age.

 

But the patient access to treatment and quality care for the confirmed patients and suspected cases in the country remain question able as alleged by many.

Amid the scant resources at hospitals, most patients are now staying at home — as they either fail to get admitted to a hospital or avoid the hospitals due to the lack of quality care, said doctors and sufferers.

Till Saturday, Bangladesh registered 1,33,978 COVID-19 patients, including 1,695 deaths.

The country now stands the 17th worst-affected country in the world with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Despite a high number of cases, the country is now in the 149th position among 215 countries in terms of testing patients.

The COVID-19 tests per million population in Bangladesh is 4,422, according to the worldometers.info.

‘Treatment is a secondary issue and less effective in preventing a pandemic. We must intensify the preventive measures like quick identification of patients and isolation and quarantine of their contacts,’ Mustuq said. 

‘Without the preventive measures in place,’ he said, ‘we cannot ensure proper treatment of patients at hospitals.’

For treatment, Mustuq emphasised, the less serious patients should be admitted to the field hospitals and the critical ones to the full-fledged hospitals.

‘Admitting the less serious patients to the field hospitals helps better management of patients and reduces the chances of spreading the virus to others,’ he said.

‘But all the measures are being taken in a sluggish manner, which will linger the COVID-19 pandemic in the country,’ Mustuq said.

Bangladesh Medical Association’s former president Rashid-e-Mahbub said that so far Bangladesh failed to make the efforts against the COVID-19 spread in an ‘organised way.’

‘Our infection rates are rising as we could not make organised efforts to identify the patients, isolate them and do the contract- tracing,’ he said.

 

‘We are doing the tasks but we’ve to definitely improve the performance of the tasks in an organised way,’ he asserted.

Having the suspected COVID-19 patients tested has become a challenge as there are only 66 labs in the country, mostly in the capital, which can test less than 20,000 patients a day.

The contact-tracing of the confirmed patients has remained half-hearted in the country.

Directorate General of Health Services records show that 3,504 COVID-19 patients were identified in the 24 hours ending at 8:00am Saturday, but during that time, only 726 people were isolated and 2,312 others quarantined.

Currently, 77,965 COVID-19 patients are under treatment, but only 14,267 people were in isolation and 63,913 were in quarantine, although a single patient has contacted many people before they were confirmed by testing.

The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research is primarily tasked with the contact-tracing job, but they are carrying out their work ‘half-heartedly’, said an official.

‘It is impossible to identify the contacts of a patient when the virus is already prevalent in communities and anyone in per five persons has the chance to be identified as positive if tested,’ the official said.

IEDCR officials could not be reached for formal comment.

The DGHS director for communicable diseases, Shahnila Ferdousi, said that they did not even know the locations of all the identified patients and where they were staying.

AS far as treatment of patients is concerned, it has become common for both confirmed and suspected patients to run from one hospital to another for hospitalisation.

The DGHS on Friday said that nearly 70 per cent of the hospital beds dedicated for COVID-19 patients remained vacant.

It said that only 4,691 patients were in hospitals on Friday although there were 14,610 beds available.

The DGHS data on the availability of ICU beds also raised eyebrows as it said that only 183 patients were in ICU beds while the number of the available ICU beds was 379, but COVID-19 patients and their relatives were desperately looking for ICU beds.

The DGHS on Saturday said that 4,225 COVID-19 patients were in general beds and 112 in ICU beds on the day, meaning that a staggering 73,628 of the active 77,965 cases were taking treatment at home.

The patients at home are not properly taken care of or followed up by the DGHS as every day a proportion of the daily COVID-19 deaths are happening at homes.

Since May 17, the DGHS data showed, at least 305 people have died at home or on the way to hospitals, implying that 18 per cent of the total COVID-19 deaths in Bangladesh occurred at home or on the way to hospitals.

DGHS director general Abdul Kalam Azad last week told New Age that patients were apathetic about hospital and preferred to stay at home.

Virologist Nazrul Islam said that the COVID-19 deaths at home raised the questions as to how the DGHS were managing the patients.

Health secretary Abdul Mannan said that the government already appointed several hundred doctors and nurses to engage in the fight against COVID-19 and the appointment of another batch of manpower was under process.

He said that the number of COVID-19 tests would increase to over 20,000 a day soon.

Mannan said that everyone, including the general people and the private sector, must work together with the government to tackle a pandemic like COVID-19.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net